Library: Creative Design

Identify and fix print errors with easy-to-use preflight tools

Added on Friday 4th of September 2009 09:23 am EST

The appearance of your printed documents
is as important as meeting your deadlines
and staying within your budget. It′s hard
work to make these elements align, but
you can make the job a lot easier if you add
preflighting to your production workflow.
Acrobat Professional makes it easy to do with
its preflight tools.

Preflight inspectionSome issues preflighting identifies are color,
fonts, transparency, image resolution, and
PDF version compatibility. Preflighting your
PDFs checks the file against a set of userdefined
values called preflight profiles. Before
you run a preflight check or create a PDF for
print, you should:
• Use settings provided by your print service
provider, or use the predefined settings of
the application that the PDF was created in
(for example, InDesign or Illustrator).
• Use CMYK or DeviceN color space in four
color process jobs (use DeviceN when
duotones, tritons, or quadtones are
involved).
• Embed all fonts from within the
originating application to eliminate font
substitution.

Quality controlPreflighting should occur after the design
process is complete, but prior to sending your
job files to the printer. The preflight feature
in Ac...